China
China is the third largest country in the world and is located in eastern Asia. Its capital is Beijing. The state exercises jurisdiction and is covered together with the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. Cities It also had five autonomous regions and spread-through cities: *Anyang *Baotou *Beijing (also called Peking) *Bengbu *Changchun *Changsha *Changzhou *Chengdu *Chongqing *Chuzhou *Dalian *Datong *Dongguan *Fenghuang *Foshan *Fuzhou *Ganzhou *Guang'an *Guangzhou *Guilin *Guiying *Haikou *Hangzhou *Harbin *Hefei *Hengyang *Hong Kong *Huai'an *Huainan *Huizhou *Huzhou *Jiaxing *Jilin *Jinan *Jinhua *Jining *Jiujiang *Kunming *Kunshan *Lanzhou *Lhasa *Linyi *Luoyang *Macau *Mudanjiang *Nanchang *Nanjing *Nanning *Nantong *Ningbo *Putian *Qingdao *Qingyuan *Quanzhou *Shanghai *Shantou *Shaoxing *Shenyang *Shenzhen *Shijiazhuang *Suzhou *Taiyuan *Taizhou *Tangshan *Tianjin *Urumqi *Weifang *Wenzhou *Wuhan *Wuhu *Wu'xi *Xi'an *Xiamen *Xiangyang *Xining *Xuzhou *Yancheng *Yangzhou *Yantai *Yichang *Yinchuan *Yingtan *Zhangjiagang *Zhangzhou *Zhengzhou *Zhongshan *Zhuhai *Zhuzhou *Zibo Contributions *Shanghai Metro has been rapidly developed since 2010; and will be finishing it fast as possible. *Wuhan Metro has been introduced since Jonathan has been in ITE College East and saw Timothy Mok. *Some of the Mercedes-Benz O405s has been donated to China after de-registration between 2008 and 2010, likewise the factories from Yutong, Zhongtong, King Long, Higer, Anhui Ankai and Sunlong are stationed there. The Leyland Atlantean (Alexander L) was previously from Singapore Bus Services, went in to China in 1993. *The Tampines Primary School flew the TPS Airlines from Paya Lebar Airport to Jinan, and suddenly landed there in 2007. *Students went for the China Pavilion in 2010 (for the Expo 2010), together with Angeline Wong. *A number of ex Arriva London Mercedes Citaro bendy buses are stored at a depot in Guangzhou, China in 2013. Only around 10 years old but unlikely to find new owners. *Huang Wen had went to most parts of China around 2010, 2011 and 2013. *Angeline Wong had went to Guangzhou in March 2017 for the Graduation trip, followed by going to Taipei before accelerating to Korea. *The Koh family had went to China in March 2005 (10 of them). History The 2008 Sichuan earthquake ( ), also known as the Great Sichuan earthquake or Wenchuan earthquake, occurred at 14:28:01 China Standard Time on May 12, 2008. Measuring at 8.0 Ms (7.9 Mw), the earthquake's epicenter was located west-northwest of Chengdu, the provincial capital, with a focal depth of . The earthquake ruptured the fault for over , with surface displacements of several meters. The earthquake was also felt in nearby countries and as far away as both Beijing and Shanghai— away, respectively—where office buildings swayed with the tremor. Strong aftershocks, some exceeding 6 Ms, continued to hit the area up to several months after the main shock, causing further casualties and damage. The earthquake also caused the largest number of geohazards ever recorded, including about 200,000 landslides and more than 800 quake lakes distributed over an area of . Over 69,000 people lost their lives in the quake, including 68,636 in Sichuan province. 374,176 were reported injured, with 18,222 listed as missing as of July 2008. The geohazards triggered by the earthquake are thought to be responsible for at least one third of the death toll. The earthquake left about 4.8 million people homeless, though the number could be as high as 11 million. Approximately 15 million people lived in the affected area. It was the deadliest earthquake to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed at least 240,000 people, and the strongest in the country since the 1950 Chayu earthquake, which registered at 8.5 on the Richter magnitude scale. It is the 18th deadliest earthquake of all time. On November 6, 2008, the central government announced that it would spend 1 trillion RMB (about US$146.5 billion) over the next three years to rebuild areas ravaged by the earthquake, as part of the Chinese economic stimulus program. Great Wall of China The Great Wall of China (Chinese: 萬里長城; pinyin: Wànlǐ Chángchéng) is the collective name of a series of fortification systems generally built across the historical northern borders of China to protect and consolidate territories of Chinese states and empires against various nomadic groups of the steppe and their polities. Several walls were being built from as early as the 7th century BC by ancient Chinese states; selective stretches were later joined together by Qin Shi Huang (220–206 BC), the first Emperor of China. Little of the Qin wall remains. Later on, many successive dynasties have built and maintained multiple stretches of border walls. The most currently well-known of the walls were built by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Apart from defense, other purposes of the Great Wall have included border controls, allowing the imposition of duties on goods transported along the Silk Road, regulation or encouragement of trade and the control of immigration and emigration. Furthermore, the defensive characteristics of the Great Wall were enhanced by the construction of watch towers, troop barracks, garrison stations, signaling capabilities through the means of smoke or fire, and the fact that the path of the Great Wall also served as a transportation corridor. The frontier walls built by different dynasties have multiple courses. Collectively, they stretch from Liaodong in the east to Lop Lake in the west, from the present-day Sino–Russian border in the north to Taohe River in the south; along an arc that roughly delineates the edge of Mongolian steppe. A comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has concluded that the walls built by the Ming dynasty measure 8,850 km (5,500 mi). This is made up of 6,259 km (3,889 mi) sections of actual wall, 359 km (223 mi) of trenches and 2,232 km (1,387 mi) of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers. Another archaeological survey found that the entire wall with all of its branches measures out to be 21,196 km (13,171 mi). Today, the defensive system of Great Wall is generally recognized as one of the most impressive architectural feats in history. Great Firewall of China It is not to be confused as Great Firewall of China, where the Great Firewall of China (GFW) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in the Internet censorship in China is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic. The effect includes: limiting access to foreign information sources, blocking foreign internet tools (e.g. Google search, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, and others) and mobile apps, and requiring foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations. Besides censorship, the GFW has also influenced the development of China's internal internet economy by nurturing domestic companies and reducing the effectiveness of products from foreign internet companies. The system blocks content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through. It consists of custom DNS, proxy servers, and other filtering mechanism. It can range from the IP range ban, DNS spoofing/filtering and redirection, URL filtering using transparent proxies, packet forging, TCP reset attacks, Man-in-the-middle attacks with TLS, and network enumeration. Censored content *Web sites belonging to "outlawed" or suppressed groups, such as pro-democracy activists and Falun Gong. *News sources that often cover topics that are considered defamatory against China, such as police brutality, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, democracy sites. These sites include Voice of America and the Chinese edition of BBC News. *Sites related to the Taiwanese government, media, or other organizations, including sites dedicated to religious content, and most large Taiwanese community websites or blogs. *Web sites that contain anything the Chinese authorities regard as obscenity or pornography. *Web sites relating to criminal activity. *Sites linked with the Dalai Lama, his teachings or the International Tibet Independence Movement. *Most blogging sites experience frequent or permanent outages. *Web sites deemed as subversive. *Other topics censored include: 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests, Xinjiang re-education camps, Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China, and more. Circumvention Because the Great Firewall only blocks the IP addresses and domain names, and inspects the data being sent or received, the basic censorship circumvention strategy is to use proxy nodes and encrypt the data. Most circumvention tools are: *Proxy servers outside China can be used, although using just a simple open proxy (HTTP or SOCKS) without also using the encrypted tunnel (such as HTTPS) does little to circumvent the sophisticated errors. *Companies can also establish regional sites in China. This prevents the content from going through the Great Firewall of China, however it requires companies to apply for TCP licences. *Onion routing such as Tor can be used. *Freegate, Ultrasurf and Psiphon are free programs that circumvent the Chinese firewall by using multiple proxies but still behave as though it is still in China. *VPN (virtual private networks) and SSL (secure shell) are the powerful and stable tools for bypassing surveillance technologies. They use the same basic approaches, proxies and encrypted channels, used by other circumvention tools, but depend on a private host, a virtual host, or an account outside of China, rather than open, free proxies. *Open application programming interface (API) used by Twitter which enables to post and retrieve tweets on sites other than Twitter. "The idea is that coders elsewhere get to Twitter, and offer up feeds at their own URLs—which the government has to chase down one by one." says Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. *Reconfiguration at the end points of communication, encryption, discarding reset packets according to the TTL value (time to live) by distinguishing those resets generated by the Firewall and those made by end user, not routing any further packets to sites that have triggered blocking behavior. Transport Since the late 1990s, China's national road network has been significantly expanded through the creation of a network of national highways and expressways. In 2018, China's highways had reached a total length of , making it the longest highway system in the world; and China's railways reached a total length of 127,000 km by 2017. By the end of 2018, China's high-speed railway network reached a length of 29,000 km, representing more than 60% of the world's total. In 1991, there were only six bridges across the main stretch of the Yangtze River, which bisects the country into northern and southern halves. By October 2014, there were 81 such bridges and tunnels. China has the world's largest market for automobiles, having surpassed the United States in both auto sales and production. Sales of passenger cars in 2016 exceeded 24 million. A side-effect of the rapid growth of China's road network has been a significant rise in traffic accidents, with poorly enforced traffic laws cited as a possible cause—in 2011 alone, around 62,000 Chinese died in road accidents. However, the Chinese government has taken a lot of steps to address this problem and has reduced the number of fatalities in traffic accidents by 20% from 2007 to 2017. In urban areas, bicycles remain a common mode of transport, despite the increasing prevalence of automobiles – , there are approximately 470 million bicycles in China. China's railways, which are state-owned, are among the busiest in the world, handling a quarter of the world's rail traffic volume on only 6 percent of the world's tracks in 2006. , the country had of railways, the second longest network in the world. The railways strain to meet enormous demand particularly during the Chinese New Year holiday, when the world's largest annual human migration takes place. In 2013, Chinese railways delivered 2.106 billion passenger trips, generating 1,059.56 billion passenger-kilometers and carried 3.967 billion tons of freight, generating 2,917.4 billion cargo tons-kilometers. China's high-speed rail (HSR) system started construction in the early 2000s. By the end of 2018, high speed rail in China had over of dedicated lines alone, a length that exceeds rest of the world's high-speed rail tracks combined, making it the longest HSR network in the world. With an annual ridership of over 1.1 billion passengers in 2015 it is the world's busiest. The network includes the Beijing–Guangzhou–Shenzhen High-Speed Railway, the single longest HSR line in the world, and the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which has three of longest railroad bridges in the world. The HSR track network is set to reach approximately by the end of 2019. The Shanghai Maglev Train, which reaches , is the fastest commercial train service in the world. In May 2019, China released a prototype for a maglev high-speed train that would reach a speed of 600 km/hr (375 mph); and it's expected to go into commercial production by 2021. Since 2000, the growth of rapid transit systems in Chinese cities has accelerated. , 26 Chinese cities have urban mass transit systems in operation and 39 more have metro systems approved with a dozen more to join them by 2020. The Shanghai Metro, Beijing Subway, Guangzhou Metro, Hong Kong MTR and Shenzhen Metro are among the longest and busiest in the world. The Macau LRT was first proposed in 2003, but the final go-ahead was not announced until 2006. It will use Mitsubishi Crystal Mover train cars, something to be similar to Sengkang and Punggol LRT. The Macau Light Transit System will serve the Macau Peninsula, Taipa island, Cotai reclamation area and Macau International Airport. The car is named Ocean Cruiser. The transport authorities have no jurisdiction in Hong Kong and Macau. Hong Kong's transport is regulated by Transport Department of Hong Kong. In 1992, a new large-scale rail project was launched in China, called the "New Silk Road" or "Eurasian Continental Bridge" project. The project involved the modernization and infrastructure development of a 4,131 km (2,567 mi) railroad route starting in Lianyungang, Jiangsu, and traveling through central and northwestern China to Urumqi, Xinjiang, to the Alataw Pass into Kazakhstan. From that point, the railroad links to some 6,800 km (4,225 mi) of routes that end in Rotterdam. A 1,080 km (671 mi) section of the Qingzang railway has been completed from Golmud to Lhasa. The 815 km (506 mi) section from Xining to Golmud in Qinghai opened to traffic in 1984. The railway's highest point, the Tanggula Mountain Pass, is 5,072 m above sea level, making it the highest railway in the world. More than 960 km (597 mi), or over four-fifths of the railway, is at an altitude of more than 4,000 m, and over half of it was laid on frozen earth. Because of the high altitudes, carriages are supplied with supplemental oxygen. Linking Lhasa and Shigatse together in Tibet, the construction of a 254 km (158 mi) extension line of the Qingzang railway started in 2009 with completion expected by 2014. There were approximately 229 airports in 2017, with around 240 planned by 2020. More than two-thirds of the airports under construction worldwide in 2013 were in China, and Boeing expects that China's fleet of active commercial aircraft in China will grow from 1,910 in 2011 to 5,980 in 2031. In just five years—from 2013 to 2018—China bought 1000 planes from Boeing. With rapid expansion in civil aviation, the largest airports in China have also joined the ranks of the busiest in the world. In 2018, Beijing's Capital Airport ranked second in the world by passenger traffic (it was 26th in 2002). Since 2010, the Hong Kong International Airport and Shanghai Pudong International Airport have ranked first and third in air cargo tonnage. Some 80% of China's airspace remains restricted for military use, and Chinese airlines made up eight of the 10 worst-performing Asian airlines in terms of delays. China has over 2,000 river and seaports, about 130 of which are open to foreign shipping. In 2017, the Ports of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Guangzhou, Qingdao and Tianjin ranked in the Top 10 in the world in container traffic and cargo tonnage. The two railway links China have with a neighboring country that does not have a break of gauge is with North Korea and Vietnam. China also has links with Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, which all use the 1,520 mm (4 ft 11 27⁄32 in) gauge, and with Vietnam, where the 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in) gauge is still in use. China does not have a direct rail link with Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Pakistan or Tajikistan, but is currently planning links with Laos and India (via Burma). Variable-gauge-axle trains are sometimes used to overcome the break of gauge with neighboring countries. The mainland is also linked to Hong Kong, but not with Macau, although a Macau link is planned. Beijing Airport Beijing also will have another airport, called Beijing Daxing International Airport, which will also be completed in 2019 and will have exclusive use of British Airways and Malaysia Airlines (both Oneworld, Malaysia Airlines was also interested to join SkyTeam). Beijing Nanyuan Airport will also be closed when it moves to Daxing. The second airport was planned in 2008 at Beijing, out of which in 2012, the existing airport is nearing its capacity. Construction of the airport began on December 26, 2014. By March 2017, the terminal had its concrete structure capped. On January 23, 2019, the first flight inspection began to be carried out and is expected to be completed in March. On June 30, 2019, the airport officially finished construction and is in preparation for its September opening. It was initially planned for airlines of the SkyTeam alliance to be relocated to the new airport, while Star Alliance airlines would remain at Capital, effectively making both airports hubs. This was confirmed in 2016, when the Civil Aviation Administration of China announced that China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines and Xiamen Airlines along with other SkyTeam airlines would move to the new airport, while Air China and other Star Alliance carriers would remain at Capital. China Southern, China Eastern and Beijing Capital Airlines' intentions to move to Daxing were confirmed by a Xinhua report in December 2017. Ten passenger airlines (China Southern Airlines, China United Airlines, Shanghai Airlines, Beijing Capital Airlines, Hebei Airlines, Spring Airlines, Okay Airways, Juneyao Airlines, XiamenAir and Donghai Airlines) and one cargo airline (China Postal Airlines) signed agreements with the Capital Airport Group to enter the new airport. CAAC required each Mainlaind Chinese airline (other than China Postal Airlines) to serve only one Beijing-area airport following the opening of Daxing, but allowed foreign airlines (including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan-based airlines) to operate from both airports if they wished to do so. China Eastern Group and China Southern Group were each allocated 40% of landing slots with the remaining 20% for smaller Mainland China and international airlines. However, on 1 May 2019, this plan was changed by CAAC, with China Eastern Group relinquishing 10% of its allocated slots (to give it 30% of slots) to Air China Group in exchange for the China Eastern group continuing to operate its Shanghai-Beijing flights at Beijing Capital Airport. Among Oneworld carriers, British Airways and Malaysia Airlines will move their London and Kuala Lumpur to Beijing flights to Daxing whilst Finnair has filed for flights from Helsinki to Daxing as well as retaining a daily flight to Capital. American Airlines has indicated plans to relocate flights from Capital to Daxing due to its tie-up with China Southern. Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon reportedly intend to stay at Capital. The alliance announced in February 2019, that its member airlines were considering a formal co-location scheme at Daxing. Urban rail transit Several Chinese cities had urban electric tramways in the early 20th century, which were dismantled in the 1950s-1970s. Nanjing had an urban railway from 1907 to 1958. The first subway in China was built in Beijing in 1969. The Tianjin Metro followed in 1984. Hong Kong, at the time still under British colonial rule, completed its first section of subway in 1979. Today, Hong Kong's MTR Corporation has investment, consulting and management stakes in the rapid transit systems of several mainland Chinese cities. The rapid growth of the Chinese economy since the 1980s has created a huge surge in demand for urban transport. This prompted cities across China to pursue and draft proposals for subway networks, with Shanghai and Guangzhou opening their first sections of subway in the 90s, inspiring more cities to propose subway networks. In 1995, the Central Government, alarmed by the high cost and financial debt from these ambitious subway plans, put out a "notice on the suspension of approval of urban underground rapid rail transit projects" barring new subway systems outside of Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Shanghai from being built. At the time Nanjing, Wuhan, Chongqing, Dalian and Shenzhen had advanced proposals waiting to be approved. Wuhan, Chongqing, Dalian managed to circumvent the moratorium on subway construction by constructing and opening lower cost elevated lines, light metros, and monorails in the early 2000s. Rapid urbanization of China lead to severe congestion and pollution in urban areas leading to the suspension being lifted. Initially, light metro lines using small profile and shorter rolling stock were constructed to reduce costs. It was assumed that as ridership grows the line will operate trains at a low headway to increase capacity. This design paradigm was known in China as "small groups, high density" operation. However, after a few years operating, many of these lines such as Guangzhou Metro Line 3, Line 6, Shanghai Metro Line 6, and Line 8 were severely overcapacity. Guangzhou Metro Line 3 was able to reconfigure from 3-car trains into 6-car trains to slightly relieve overcapacity. This led many cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Chengdu to use higher capacity designs on newer lines. Since the mid-2000s, the growth of rapid transit systems in Chinese cities has rapidly accelerated, with most of the world's new subway mileage in the past decade opening in China. From 2009 to 2015, China built 87 mass transit rail lines, totaling 3,100 km (1,900 mi), in 25 cities at the cost of ¥988.6 billion. In 2016, the Chinese government lowered the minimum population criteria for a city to start planning a metro system from 3 million to 1.5 million residents. As part of its 13th Five Year Plan, the Chinese government published a transport whitepaper titled "Development of China's Transport". The plan envisions a more sustainable transport system with priority focused on high-capacity public transit particularly urban rail transit and bus rapid transit. All cities with over 3 million residents will start or continue to develop urban rail networks. Regional rail networks will be constructed internally connect and integrate urban agglomerations such as the Jingjinji, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta areas. In 2017, some 43 smaller third-tier cities in China have received approval to develop subway lines. *Anyang Metro *Baotou Metro *Beijing Subway (also called Peking) *Bengbu Metro *Changchun Subway *Changsha Metro *Changzhou Metro *Chengdu Metro *Chongqing Rail Transit *Chuzhou Metro *Dalian Metro *Datong Metro *Dongguan Metro *Fenghuang Maglev *Foshan Metro *Fuzhou Metro *Ganzhou Metro *Guang'an Rail Transit *Guangzhou Metro *Guilin Metro *Guiying Metro *Haikou Metro *Hangzhou Metro *Harbin Metro *Hefei Metro *Hengyang Metro *Hohhot Metro *Hong Kong MTR *Huai'an Metro *Huainan Metro *Huizhou Metro *Huzhou Metro *Jiaxing Metro *Jilin Metro *Jinan Metro *Jinhua Metro *Jining Metro *Jiujiang Metro *Kunming Metro *Kunshan Metro *Lanzhou Metro *Lhasa Metro *Linyi Metro *Luoyang Metro *Macau Light Rail Transit *Mudanjiang Metro *Nanchang Metro *Nanjing Metro *Nanning Metro *Nantong Metro *Ningbo Rail Transit *Putian Metro *Qingdao Metro *Qingyuan Maglev *Quanzhou Metro *Shanghai Metro *Shantou Metro *Shaoxing Metro *Shenyang Metro *Shenzhen Metro *Shijiazhuang Metro *Suzhou Rail Transit *Taiyuan Metro and Maglev *Taizhou Metro *Tangshan Metro *Tianjin Metro *Urumqi Metro *Weifang Metro *Wenzhou Metro *Wuhan Metro *Wuhu Rail Transit *Wu'xi Metro *Xi'an Metro *Xiamen Metro *Xiangyang Metro *Xining Metro *Xuzhou Metro *Yancheng Metro *Yangzhou Metro *Yantai Metro *Yichang Metro *Yinchuan Metro *Yingtan Metro *Zhangjiagang Metro *Zhangzhou Metro *Zhengzhou Metro *Zhongshan Metro *Zhuhai Metro *Zhuzhou Metro *Zibo Metro Economy Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and Lenovo have become world leaders in telecommunications and personal computing. China is also home to the CRRC (formerly China North Locomotive and Rolling Stock Corp Ltd - CNR and China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock Corp Ltd - CSR). It became China Rolling Stock Company (CRRC).